Chris Weitz, a director at Deloitte Consulting LLP, is charged with leading the financial services consulting company's team for advisory services in cloud computing. He's been in this role for five years, and previously held a global consulting position with Deloitte for nine years. Overall, he's been in the IT business for a little over 30 years.

Thus, cloud computing is hardly the first seismic shift in IT that Weitz has seen. And when it comes to cloud security and data privacy -- identified by 49% of the more than 950 people polled recently by Deloitte at its Dbrief event as the most challenging aspect of implementing a hybrid cloud environment -- he says the major cloud providers are better at it than most people think...

Cloud computing is moving away from being monolithic, where Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the only major cloud service provider, to a marketplace technology, with several cloud-based service providers, as users’ appetite for cloud grows, according to analyst firm 451 Research.

“It has taken a few years, but 2012 is the year we have seen some big difference, most of it driven by Openstack providers such as Rackspace,” said Simon Robinson, research vice-president of 451 Research, at the SNW Europe 2012 conference in Frankfurt...

While some critics would have you believe otherwise, cloud computing is not a fad. It is here for the long haul. Odds are, your business is already using cloud services without realizing it. However, many businesses start using cloud services without having an adequate understanding of their data needs, budgetary resources or the ability of a specific cloud provider to meet business needs.

Let’s dive into some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your data by using cloud-based services...

The adoption of cloud computing in India is witnessing a strong growth and the rate of adoption has witnessed a growth of around 25% over last year. A study conducted by cloud service provider Vmware and Forrester Consulting also said that the more companies are planning to deploy cloud solutions within he next 18 months.

The study VMware Cloud Index 2012 conducted in 11 Asia Pacific countries said that around 40% of respondents feel that there is internal resistance to change that is hindering the adoption of cloud, suggesting that faster cloud adoption is possible for Indian organizations if these hindrances can be overcome. “The survey demonstrates the potential for cloud computing in the country and reflects a double digit rate of adoption,” said T Srinivasan, Managing Director, VMware (India and SAARC)...

When cloud computing first emerged as the ‘next big thing’ five years ago, it was written off by some as a passing craze without any real substance. Today, industry analyst Gartner lists it as one of the four main forces transforming the IT landscape. The term ‘cloud’ covers a range of different hosted platforms and services. Its many benefits include an ability to store vast amounts of data and supply the very latest editions of software applications, often with real-time updates, accompanied by lower costs and greater convenience, flexibility and scalability.

Rapidly growing firms, international companies or those with an increasingly mobile workforce are examples of the kind of businesses that stand to gain from centrally hosted information and applications. Customers pay only for what they use, and are free to expand or contract capacity to suit demand. Not surprisingly, many organisations are looking to abandon their traditional, in-house, hardware-based systems to migrate to a cloud set-up...

VMware recently reported revenue growth of 20% in its third quarter ended Sept. 30. It projects revenue growth for the year of around 21% to 22%. That means it will close out the year with total revenues close to $4.5 or $4.6 billion, compared to $3.8 billion last year. Pretty good for an enterprise software company facing "tough macroeconomic conditions," as co-president Carl Eschenbach phrased it. Or is it?

Net income is up only 3%, to $540 million from $524 million, for the first nine months of 2012 compared to 2011, which means gaining that 20% revenue growth is costing VMware something. It's possible the spread of server consolidation around the world is still the main fuel behind VMware's revenues. That trend is so widespread that VMware's international revenues now exceed those produced in the U.S., $580 million in the third quarter versus $554 million...

Nowadays, more and more businesses are moving their operations to the cloud as the industry starts to realize the benefits that the cloud brings, whether it’s cost-efficiency, improved flexibility and agility, or any of the myriad advantages that comes from cloud computing. However, before you start migrating all of your data to the cloud, there are some considerations that you need to think about first, such as:

Bigger is Not Necessarily Better

Due to the popularity of cloud computing, you’ll see a lot of large companies from other IT related sectors now staking their claim on the rapidly growing cloud market, but don’t always assume that you’ll be better off with a certain provider just because they are a large, popular company – as they could have earned their reputation in another field and are still not used to the cloud business. It would be wise to do your research first and focus on the provider’s reputation regarding cloud services before signing up with one...

Instead of resisting change and viewing cloud computing trends as a threat, CIOs need to start building services for their organisations and focus on protecting their organisations' data, Christian Verstraete, the CTO of Hewlett-Packard’s Cloud Strategy Team Worldwide, told Siliconrepublc.com.

Verstraete is responsible for the definition of HP’s cloud functional and reference architectures, as well as the co-ordination of cloud activities across HP. He is effectively the link between the CTO community inside HP, as well as the tech giant’s customers and partners...

Cloud computing is rapidly expanding. This means that large and smaller business is increasing their bandwidth consumption as they make the most of the many opportunities the cloud has to offer. Companies particularly enjoy the ability to purchase services that were once only accessible to enterprise-level businesses, such as data storage, security, billing support, and business voice.

Though no longer in its infancy, the age of cloud services is relatively young and it has to surmount a number of obstacles that are set to impede further growth. Here are the three main threats to cloud technology...

I was recently invited to Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, Ontario, to attend an event hosted by the Canadian Cloud Council. The focus of the event was to discuss ways to help accelerate the adoption and proliferation of Canadian cloud centric products in services. Before I get into what was discussed, I need to provide some context to the current state of Internet connectivity in Canada. To understand the Internet landscape in Canada is to endeavour into the realm of duopolies, bandwidth caps and mediocre Internet connections. As it stands today, Canada has effectively become the Digital Third World.

A recent video interview with The Globe and Mail’s Omar El Akkad and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings summaries the problems with cloud computing in Canada. Hastings’ specifically calls out capped Internet plans as compared to the rest of the world saying “Canada has the misfortune of being the country with the lowest internet caps maybe in the world but certainly in the developed world and in all of the Netflix world. In Mexico, Internet is largely uncapped; in the US it’s largely uncapped; in the UK it’s completely uncapped; in Canada there’s a number of providers with very low caps…I don’t quite understand it.”...